How to retain your best employees, with Kristie Holmes

Employee retention lies at the heart of every successful business. It's the lifeline that keeps productivity high and morale even higher, making your team feel valued and appreciated, and motivating them to do their best. 

Yet, many companies struggle with keeping their best talent. Even businesses that seem great on paper often face high turnover rates. So why is it becoming harder to retain your employees? Why is this a recurring issue? What makes people want to leave? And what can you do to really show you appreciate them in a personal and relevant way?

In this episode, Kristie Holmes and I talk about what it takes to retain great talent in small businesses. She shares the basics of employee retention strategies and provides practical tips for businesses aiming to build and maintain strong teams.

Kristie is the dynamic force behind The HR Dept. With over 15 years of profound experience in recruiting and Human Resources across a spectrum of industries, she embodies the spirit of innovation and dedication. Her mission to provide tailored HR services ensures that small businesses not only survive but thrive in today's competitive landscape.

Download her HR templates to help you get your recruitment process in place:

https://thehrdeptky.com/resources/

We discuss: (timestamps)

02:49 Why a good retention strategy is important

04:14 Common issues affecting employee retention

07:36  The perceived appreciation gap between managers and employees

08:34 Practical ways for managers to show appreciation to employees

10:02 The impact of public appreciation on company culture

11:07 Monetary and non-monetary methods to appreciate employees

16:09 Showing appreciation to remote teams

17:37 Effective methods for remote team appreciation

21:45 Employee training and development on a tight budget

24:04 Implementing an official mentorship program

25:29 Rewarding employees who mentor others

27:41 Encouraging employee-to-employee appreciation

30:19 Examples of successful employee retention strategies

36:16 Actionable steps to take to foster appreciation and gratitude

Resources:

Kristie Holmes, Owner, The HR Dept, LLC
https://thehrdeptky.com/

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-hr-dept-llc/

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/thehrdeptky/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/thehrdeptky

Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/

Blog post | How to Retain Your Best Employees

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Chapters

• 2:49 Why a good retention strategy is important
• 4:14 Common issues affecting employee retention
• 7:36 The perceived appreciation gap between managers and employees
• 8:34 Practical ways for managers to show appreciation to employees
• 10:02 The impact of public appreciation on company culture
• 11:07 Monetary and non-monetary methods to appreciate employees
• 16:09 Showing appreciation to remote teams
• 17:37 Effective methods for remote team appreciation
• 22:58 Employee training and development on a tight budget
• 25:17 Implementing an official mentorship program
• 26:42 Rewarding employees who mentor others
• 28:54 Encouraging employee-to-employee appreciation
• 31:32 Examples of successful employee retention strategies
• 37:29 Actionable steps to take to foster appreciation and gratitude

Transcript

Kathy (host):
Well, hello there, and welcome back to another episode of "Help! My Business Is Growing," a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I'm your host, Kathy Svetina, a fractional CFO and a founder of a company called NewCastle Finance, a company where we believe that everything that you do in your business is eventually going to end up in your finances. And to get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business. While you might be asking yourself, "How in the world do I get there?" Well, this is where this podcast comes in to help, because we give you some tips and ideas on what you should be looking at so that your business is healthy and sustainable. And this episode is going to be about how to retain your best employees. And you might remember our guest, who is going to be Kristie Holmes. She has been on a previous episode where we talked about how to hire your best employees. And now this episode is going to be, once you have hired these people, how do you actually make sure that they're going to stay in your business, because what I have noticed in the businesses that I work with, there might be a little bit of a revolving door happening, and you might have no idea why this is happening. So we want to give you some ways that you can think about your employee retention and why there might be issues with employee retention. So what are some of the things that you should be looking at and also, again, how do you actually fix this? Because when you keep your employees, when they're happy and they're content and they're engaged, productively engaged, for the long term, you are going to win. Your business is going to win. Everyone's going to win. So we also want to give you some ideas of how to keep them engaged. Some of them are going to cost you money, but some of them are going to be completely free. So before we go into that, I want to give you a reminder that all of the episodes on this podcast have their own timestamps and a blog post. So if you'd like to read about it, you can go into the show notes of this episode, and it's going to provide you a link where you can find all these resources. So as I mentioned, my guest today is Kristie Holmes. She is the dynamic force behind the HR department with over 15 years of profound experience in recruiting and human resources across the spectrum of industries. Kristie embodies a spirit of innovation and dedication. Her mission to provide tailored HR services ensured that small businesses not only survive but thrive in today's competitive landscape. Join us.

Kathy (host):
Kristie, welcome back to this podcast.

Kristie (guest):
Hi, Kathy, thanks for having me back. I'm excited to be here.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, you've, uh, you know, you're a favorite of ours. Now, love it. The last time you were here, we talked about how to recruit your employees, and today we're going to be focusing on how to actually keep them. Because even if you go through all this hard work to find yourself rock stars, if you're not able to keep them, you're going to have to go back to the drawing board and recruit again. And that is timely. It can be expensive. It's just it can affect culture. I mean, there's so many problems. And let's talk a little bit about this. Why is it so important to make sure that you have a good retention strategy in place in your business?

Kristie (guest):
Well, big parts what you just said, it's very expensive turnover is because you've got the cost of, of course, posting the job. If you're using a staffing company or a recruiting firm like myself, there's that cost, but then there's also the time cost of somebody's got to take the time to look through those resumes, do the interviews while all of this is happening, that job still has to get done, so somebody else on your team is carrying an extra workload, which means neither job is getting being done to 100% so you've got your loss of production as well that can be hard to monetize, but you're definitely losing money.

Kathy (host):
And what are some of the issues that you see when you go into the businesses that are affecting this retention I'm sure. Again, it's like, it's like an onion. It's like it could be, it could be anything, and the more deeper down you go, the more problems you find. So what are some of the most common retention problems that you see and the sources of those?

Kristie (guest):
There are really two things that you kind of hear the most, especially as we do recruiting and we're interviewing people to fill these positions, we're hearing about the challenges they've had at past jobs while they've left that job and are looking for a new one. And so one is very simple, and it's employees don't always feel appreciated. So I was recently reading a study where companies were the owners and the business managers were surveyed, and then the employees were surveyed as well. Well, 80% of managers and ownership felt that they did a good job of showing their employees how appreciated they were. However, of their employees surveyed, only 40% of the employees felt like the manager showed them appreciation. So it's a very simple and, more importantly, a free thing that you can do, and that's just make sure you're taking a minute to tell your employees how much you appreciate their hard work. So it could just be a general "Hey, I just wanna let you know, you were here bright and early, ready to rock every single day, and I really appreciate that." Or it could be a specific project, you know, "Hey, we just got that huge proposal out. You did an awesome job with it. You know, client's coming on board," and it's such a little thing that the employees love it, and it helps them be more productive, it motivates them, right, to do more. And employee doesn't feel appreciated, they will go find another job. You know, people will work harder, actually, not making the big bucks, if you will, as long as they're making enough to pay for their families. If they've got a work-life balance, and they're feeling appreciated by their employer, they're going to stay for a really long time. And then the other thing that we hear the most from job seekers is people are looking for training and development opportunities, growth potential. And so, of course, training can come in a number of different ways. It could be online classrooms. There's a great website called Udemy that has just this huge repository of classes on any subject you could think of. Then, of course, you've got webinars, in-person seminars. It could even be the owner coming and spending an hour at somebody's desk or on the job site and kind of showing them the ropes, you know, telling them, "Hey, you're doing a great job with this, but we could try this and do it better." Employees want that. They want to know how they can do better, how they can advance. But really, it just kind of comes down to talking to your team. Find out what's important to them. Find out, you know, what are your career goals? How can we help drive those career goals? How can we help get you to the next level, and they'll tell you what they want, and as long as they're being listened to again, that's just showing your appreciation. You respect them enough to want to know what they want, and you want to contribute to those goals.

Kathy (host):
And let's go back into the first that employee don't feel appreciated, because that was astounding to me, that statistics that 80% of the owners feel like they're showing appreciation, but only 40% of employees feel like they're getting that appreciation. That is a huge disconnect. Why do you think that happens?

Kristie (guest):
Oh yeah, I'm sure there's a number of different things. I think part of it is maybe the owner or a manager gets handed a report and just gives kind of a thanks, but the employee doesn't really hear that as a thanks. It's just kind of like a force. Somebody gives you something, you say, thank you. And so while the employers may be doing that, what the employees want is more of a genuine, heartfelt you took a minute to just stop and say, "Hey, I just want to let you know you're doing a good job." And if the employees aren't hearing that specifically, then to them, it's not happening.

Kathy (host):
How would that look like in practicality, for example, that you have an employee that you want to show them your appreciation. And so far, you haven't really like taken this mindful moment of, okay, I am going to show my appreciation to this employee. I'd say thank you. I maybe send them a great job in a chat or in in an email. But would that be enough? Or would you like put them aside and say I really appreciate how you've handled this and this because of these reasons. Like, how would that look like in a, you know, in a way, in an everyday life, when you're trying to manage these people?

Kristie (guest):
I think you want to look for opportunities, and then to you, everybody's different. So some people might be satisfied with an email. Some people might need that literal pat on the back that says, "Hey, good job." That again, goes back to talk to your employees. Just get to know your employees, because then you'll get to know what level do you need to thank them on for them to feel appreciated? You know, because another easy way to do it is in front of the team. If you have a company meeting, call somebody out for doing a great job. You know, "Hey, everybody give her a round of applause to Kathy, because she, you know, knocked it out of the park last week." Such a little thing takes 30 seconds. But, you know, you've just built a lot of trust and kind of relationship with that employee, because they're like, "Hmm, I. Wow, that got noticed. Appreciate that."

Kathy (host):
I think this is the public appreciation. It is such an underutilized praise in companies. And I've seen this when I was in my, you know, in my corporate days, and I noticed the companies that did it well, and the people were the most happy, where people were actually called out in public for the things that we're doing well, because it shows the team, not just the person, obviously the person that's getting the praise, it's happy I'm doing a great job. I'm actually making a difference. But it also models to the other employees that we care about you. We care what you doing, and we're going to call out all the good things and give you the public praise. And that also does wonder for the culture?

Kristie (guest):
Absolutely. Yeah, even just showing appreciation to one employee, like you said, can ripple across the entire company. Because really, I mean, let's be honest, everybody's going to then strive for that. Who let me get a do a good job so I can get called out in the next meeting. They may not be consciously thinking that, but it is driving them to work harder.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, what are some of the other ways that you can show appreciation to your employees? And I want to separate this between the monetary and not monetary ways, because I think that a lot of business owners get, they either say thank you, or they think about the praise in terms of, "Oh, I'm going to give them a bonus," or something like that. But there's a whole spectrum of things that you can do, and let's talk a little bit about that.

Kristie (guest):
Sure, you know. So we'll start with kind of the free stuff. So of course, there's a just simple thank you. You know, social media is a really great tool for that as well. You know, I know, see, lots of places will do a little blurb about their employee of the month. But just even go beyond that, whether you have an employee of the month program or not, if you have an opportunity where somebody's done something stellar enough that it deserves a little public recognition like that, do a post. You know, I've even seen somebody, "Oh, congratulations to Bob and his wife. They just bought a new home," you know, just talking about them, you know, publicly, and letting people know how happy you are to have them as part of your team. It didn't cost you anything, but it gets you a whole lot in return. So, yeah, there's not a ton of free stuff out there. You can do team building activities, you know, something free you can do is like a scavenger hunt. So if you're in a business park, you know, you could have a lot of fun with it. And say, "Okay, you need to get X number of business cards. Maybe, you know somebody at one of the companies, and say, Okay, you need to go see Susie. She's got a hidden item for you" or something, and it's, it's more of an employee engagement, but it plays into appreciation, because it just builds camaraderie with everybody. And then there are ways you can spend a little bit of money or a lot of money. I many, many years ago, worked at a restaurant that the gentleman that owned it was quite interesting to work for. He had a little bit of a temper, and he was pretty, you know, straight laced. Tell you how it is. And so once a year, he had an employee appreciation party where he would shut the restaurant down for a couple of hours. Brought us all in, and he did prizes. He had these envelopes that were numbered, like one to 25 and so then you would go pick up an envelope then, and there was a different number. And so whatever envelope responded to that number was your prize. And so it was anywhere from 50 to $500. I think I got, like a portable DVD player. Somebody else got an iPod. This was many, many years ago when iPods were still… but different prizes. And he straight up told us, "I know I'm a pill to work for. So this is my way of saying, thank you all for putting up with me all year long." You know same you can do, like holiday parties, if you just did a huge project and you've completed some monster project. Do a thank you party just to say, hey, so you could have pizza brought in. You know, there's a number of the different sandwich places that you can order the box lunches, and they'll bring them out. Not a very large investment, but will go a long way with your team. "Oh, man, guess what we did at work today."

Kathy (host):
And this is such a good way to celebrate the end of project too, because when you're in a company and a business that it just keeps going without actually stopping and appreciating "Hey, this is what we've accomplished together." It just feels like you're constantly like, running, running, without being appreciated, like "I'm doing all this extra work, but no one's really like," it's just, it just kind of feels like you're being a little bit taken advantage of. So having that moment to stop and reflect and say, this is where, hey, this is where we come together and through all these weeks or months that we work together. We successfully implemented this project. It's, it's such a great opportunity to not just thank the people, but also do some culture building and do engagement. And I mean, it just, it's like a gift that keeps on giving.

Kristie (guest):
Yeah, and the culture is super important, and you can build a culture of appreciation, because it doesn't have to be just the managers thanking the employees that work for them. You know, it could be somebody going to their coworker and saying, "Hey, I really appreciate your help on that last week. You know, I don't know if I could have gotten through it without you." So if you everything, of course, is from the top down. So if you can create that culture of appreciation where the owner and the managers are thanking the team, then it's just a matter of time till the team starts thanking each other, or even going to their manager and saying, "Hey, I appreciate, really appreciate you jumping in and helping me with that last week." Because, of course, manager's job is to oversee, but as we all know, the best managers will jump in and do what they're managing, do what they're asking their employees to do. So yeah, if you can get to where everybody's appreciating everybody, I mean, you're going to have a really high producing team.

Kathy (host):
And I feel like this is a little bit easier when you are in a location together, but it gets more complex when you have a remote team. Either that might be partially remote, meaning that you have some employees that are remote but the others aren't, or if you have a fully remote team. Yeah, talk about those situations. Like, what do you do when you have part of the team in another location, and when you have a fully remote team, how do you show appreciation then,

Kristie (guest):
Well, still publicly, because I'm sure there's, you know, the big group, team meetings with everybody, so they're on video like us, but you'll have 10, 12 people on the call. What a great opportunity to say, "Hey, in case you guys didn't know," you know, keep saying Bob, "Bob did this last week, and we just really wanted to give him a shout out for that," and even ask the team to, you know, or the snaps. But then there's also, you know, it's really easy to be on the phone with somebody and as you're wrapping up, "Okay, well, thank you so much for your time," or "Thank you for this." But what would go even longer or even further is if you pick up the phone when you don't have a scheduled call, and say, "Hey, I just wanted to take a minute and let you know how much I appreciate XYZ." So that unprompted phone call that's not being, you know, pigtailed on the back of another conversation that goes a long way too, because then it's like, "Oh man, the owner took five minutes out of his day to call and talk just to me for a minute."

Kathy (host):
Yep. How about since obviously you can't really, it's harder to do a party. I mean, you can do a virtual party, yeah. But is there anything that you have seen that works really well for remote teams like that?

Kristie (guest):
Yeah? So that's actually a real easy one. You can, let's say, send your, each of your team members, a $25 DoorDash gift card and say, "Okay, we're gonna have, you know, a dinner party or a lunch party. So here's a $25 DoorDash gift card. Go on, have something DoorDash to you, and we're all gonna sit and have a team lunch virtually" or virtual happy hours. Those are fun, too.

Kathy (host):
And I've also seen some teams doing like a paint and sip type of event where you actually, I mean, that gets a little bit more involved.

Kristie (guest):
That would be fun, though.

Kathy (host):
I've not seen that. Yeah, I've done that recently. I was actually through one of my networking groups, and that was during the pandemic, because we couldn't get together. They all send us these paint by numbers canvases, and we sat down for an hour. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Kristie (guest):
Yeah. And that's, you know, to build on those teams is, you know, I've also seen like a show and tell, you know, bring forget what you know, objects. Or, you know, if you're in a company that is animal lovers, you know, your show and tell is, we want to see your pet. You know, get your pet on the video call, introduce us to your pet. It's a fun way for everybody to get to know each other. And really, when you do these get to know you things with your team. Again, the owners and the managers should be either making mental notes or putting notes actually somewhere where they can get to them to know these are the things that drive my employees. If I know that I have a team full of dog lovers, then if I do some sort of appreciation gift or something, I'm probably gonna do something for their dogs.

Kathy (host):
And I think what I have seen well too, and what I do in every time I meet a person or with my employees, obviously too, is I would have a note on that particular person, and that would be anything and everything, like a little tidbits of, what do they enjoy? Where do they, you know, what do they have in their family? Do they have dogs? Do they have cats? Like those little personal things? Because you can always do a callback in later conversations. It's that's important, and it just shows that you care. Obviously, we all have, you know, our brains are stretched to the maximum, yeah, and you cannot retain all that information, but it is so easy to put that in a note somewhere, and when you meet with that person, you just keep on adding on it, and then you can call back on that information, and all of a sudden you have this wealth of information on these people that you can use and you can personalize things for them.

Kristie (guest):
Absolutely. And none of us are working because we're just glutton for punishment and want to work all the time. We're all working because we have, most of us, a family to take care of them. Maybe it's just taking care of ourselves. Maybe we have goals for the future that we're trying to work hard to achieve. And so when you know the owners and managers really take the time to get to know their employees, like that. Like you said, finding out about your family, what are your interests? You know, I'm a sports junkie, and so I'm always, "Oh, so what sports are you into? Who are your teams?" And then it's just a fun talking point throughout the year, especially if it's a football fan. Football season becomes a lot more interesting for us because we're working but we're talking football too. And so then I know, if you know his team has a big game that weekend, and I can call him on Monday, and "Hey, man, that was a great game. That was such a huge win for your school." It's another way of showing appreciation, because I took a minute to remember that that was his team, and was thinking about him over the weekend, watching the game, and then called him to talk to him about it. It's such a simple thing, but that's one way that they know that they're cared and appreciated for.

Kathy (host):
Yep, exactly, you actually see them as a person versus another employee or another.

Kristie (guest):
Exactly, more of somebody that's just doing work for you.

Kathy (host):
So we've, I feel like we have put a lot of ideas out there for how employees can feel appreciated in monetary, non-monetary ways. But then the second one that we've talked about was a training in development. Let's talk a little bit about this. Because, as you mentioned, there's Udemy that you can send them to, but if you want them to specifically be trained in skills that are very specific for their job. But let's say that your budget for training and development is not as big like what would you do in that case?

Kristie (guest):
Well, you know, the first thing, I think that's most important, is everybody's a different learner, right? I know I'm a very visual person. I need to see it. I take a lot of notes, because that's how it's going to stick in my brain. But for other people, they just need to hear it. Some people just now, just walk me through it. I'm going to do it, and I'll learn it by doing it. So the first thing you need to figure out is, what type of learner is the employee? Because then you can look at different avenues. I mean, YouTube, you can probably YouTube anything. How to… I know, I've learned a lot of Excel stuff by going to YouTube videos. And how do you do this in Excel? So if you've got a limited budget, YouTube is a great resource. There could also be how-to documents. I'm sure there's different blogs or websites dedicated to step by step. This is how you do something, and so you find which way works better for your employees. But then I think the big thing is to check in with them, if it's a skill that you can somehow measure, and say, "Yes, I can see that this has gotten better," but also just having that conversation with the employee of, "How do you feel like it's going? Are you learning? Do you need more resources? Do you need more tools?" And then it might be, maybe somebody else in the company knows how to do it and can come in and kind of supplement what they've been learning by watching YouTube videos. I'll go back to Udemy. You don't need a big budget to be able to do classes on Udemy, because they've always got classes that are anywhere from five to $20. You can get some that are quite a bit more expensive, but there's a lot of great classes that I've purchased through Udemy for $10 so I don't care what your budget is. You can afford a $10 class for your employees.

Kathy (host):
And the other thing that I've also seen in companies as not just you might have, you know, yes, okay, we want people to be having the training and development classes, but also budgeting time specifically for those as well. Yeah, that goes. That goes a long way. Like, for example, what I have in my company is, obviously, I will pay for the training and development classes, but on the other hand, also, I want them to be doing it on company time, not on their own personal time, yes. So we have a dedicated time on Friday, where I want people to take one-two hours to dedicate that specifically to their training.

Kristie (guest):
Yeah, and that's exactly… anytime an employee is doing anything for you. I don't care what it is that they're doing work for the company, they should be getting paid for that time. But you know, it's not even… In just that time, if you've got a mentorship program, whether it's a formal mentorship program or just an informal, you know, hey, you know, Susie wants to learn more of this. Could you go help and spend some time showing her this? That's time away from the mentor's job, their desk as well. And so it is an investment. You know, you're not actually seeing dollars go out the door, but it is an investment that somebody's taking their time to help teach this employee. But you do it right? It's a return.

Kathy (host):
Exactly, and it's going to be tenfold return in the company over and over again. If you were to want to implement some type of a mentorship program, that it's more official versus just we all go to Susie because she's going to help us with this particular topic in as we're working in the company, if you want an official mentorship program, how would that look like, and how would you go about setting that up?

Kristie (guest):
Well, that's really going to vary on company size, but I'd say for companies that are 20 to 25 employees or less, you first want to assess your staff, find out what are the strengths of your various individuals at the company. So that you know, okay, if somebody wants to learn Excel, Michelle is our Excel guru. So anybody that needs help with Michelle. And then, of course, to find out what your employees want to work on. What do they want more training and development on? Or is it they're looking to be promoted into a different position? Their goal is not just to learn more about this position, but in construction, you would move from a superintendent to a project manager. And so you've got a superintendent that his long-term goals, I want to be a project manager. So if they're a high performing superintendent, then a mentorship program would be an existing project manager, bringing him in more and showing more of what he does for the projects that's outside of what the superintendent does. And just start kind of like a job shadow, you know, kind of seeing more, get involved with doing more of the ordering, the scheduling, you know, the estimates, all the different pieces that the project manager does that the superintendent's not really involved in. Or, you know, it could be something as simple as, you know, I need to learn how to manage my time better. I feel like I'm, you know, doing 100 things a day but not getting much done. So you might have somebody in the office that's really good at that that can, "Well, let me sit with you for a little bit and watch how I work, and then I'll sit and watch how you work and see if I can give you some tips for how you can get better." Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different ways a mentorship program could go, depending on what the ultimate goal is.

Kathy (host):
And I feel like it's also important to say this out loud, is that there might be people that, for example, if Michelle is great at Excel, that she might not be great at teaching it to people actually, yeah, you have to find people that are able to teach it, and they're also willing to teach it. Because if you just spring on Michelle, hey, now you're going to be teaching these 10 people how to use Excel better. She'd become resentful. It's like I've never asked for it. What's in it for me? Why would I want to do that?

Kristie (guest):
That is an excellent point. Something I've heard said before is some people can but don't want to. Some people can't, but want to. So you need to find the people that both can and want to.

Kathy (host):
And if you find people that can and want to, how would you reward those people in the way that they would feel appreciated? Obviously, you can use the public, you know. Thank you so much for to Michelle to agree to do this. Excellent. Would you do anything else for that? Something that would work really well, I don't know. Would you give them an extra bonus? Would you… I'll give them an extra vacation days? Anything?

Kristie (guest):
You could get them a gift card to a nice restaurant and tell them here take you and your spouse to dinner on us. We really appreciate everything you've done. Someone I've met recently, she has a very neat program that it can be used either for companies as like a client appreciation or the reason she brought it to me was it'd be a great incentive for employers to give their employees that she can gift a hotel night stay. She's got a program where you purchase these hotel nights and then you give it to the employee, and they can use it anywhere. I think it's, you know, in the 48 states. But again, if you know your employee and you know what drives them, that would be, my suggestion, is some sort of token of appreciation that you know they'll appreciate. You know, not going to give a dog gift to somebody that's a cat owner. Or, you know, not gonna give a "Here's a two-day pass to a family theme park" to a single person. You know they may not care about going to spend the day at a family fun park. So just make sure that the gift is appropriate for the person. And that's what goes back

Kathy (host):
Into the whole idea of knowing your people and knowing your employees. Hmm. And if you have to keep notes on these things so that you're not, you know, as you've said, You don't give a family tour to a person that you know.

Kristie (guest):
Single, yeah, yeah. Or you don't want to, you know, you have a weekend in Vegas to family of six that they've got kids. And, no, I'm not, no, we're not going to do that exactly.

Kathy (host):
We talked about business owner recognizing an employee and making sure that they feel, you know, valued and appreciated, but it can also go in a way where their employees can feel valued appreciated from other employees, because that is the next level. How do we cultivate that in our companies? Well, it's like

Kristie (guest):
I was saying, if you can establish that culture of appreciation, and anything you want to do with your culture, it always starts with ownership, so the owner's got to have that mindset, has to understand the importance of it and really want that as part of their culture at their company. And so it's a conversation you need to have with your managers as well. That look, this is one of my goals for our business, is for us to really show our team how much we appreciate them. Ask the managers for ideas. What ideas do you guys have? You know? Because, of course, hopefully they know the team well enough to know what would motivate their team, and then as you start to be more intentional with your appreciation, with your employees, I would certainly discuss that at company meetings as well. Another really silly thing, but if you remember the movie Legally Blonde, and they had the snap cup, and it's kind of cheesy, but I also think it's really genius that everybody would write a positive about somebody else, whether it was in the sorority or then it went on to the law firm. So at your company, you have everybody write down something nice about one of your coworkers or somebody else within the company, and then you read them. And then every time some… you know, one gets read, and it's like, "Hey, good job, Kathy." And they do the two snaps, so you don't have to do the whole snap and all that. But the idea of having everybody at the company write something down positive, and you could even say, you know, write a thank you to somebody else in the company for something that they've done, and you do those at the company meetings, that's creating that culture of appreciation. And if you start doing it enough, and it does, it just becomes habit that they don't have to wait for the meeting. You know, somebody could come into the office and be like, "Hey, kudos to Bob, because he did x, y, z," and just a really quick you, but you announced it to the team and everybody, "Hey, good job, Bob." And then everybody moves on with their day. But it just does so much for the team morale.

Kathy (host):
It comes back to like you have to model that behavior that you want in the company, and you might be modeling certain behavior that you're not aware of, and that's why you might not have that appreciation, because you yourself are not putting appreciation. A lot of times, we have to reflect back on ourselves as what type of culture, what type of team are we building, either consciously or subconsciously? Because you know, everything that you do in the business will end up in the business, so whether you want it or not, right? Are modeling certain types of behaviors, whether you pyramid want it or not want it.

Kristie (guest):
Yeah, well, and sometimes we as business owners can get so kind of tunnel focused on what we're doing, especially if we have a lot of different things moving at that time. And so sometimes you just don't realize that you've not taken a minute to thank somebody. And so that's… you don't want to get caught up in that as well. So it's definitely a fine balance for the business owners, right to make sure they're focused and getting done the 100 million things that we need to get done, but also still taking care of our team. So I don't care who you are, it's an… it has to be an intentional practice, even if you're one of those people that just kind of naturally, thanks people anyway. It goes back to the study that I mentioned at the beginning. You might not be showing as much appreciation as you think you are. So it's just something to be intentional and then mindful and paying attention as you're interacting with your team. Because if you wake up Monday morning and say, "Okay, I'm going to pay attention to myself today," and then you get to the end of the day and you think "I don't show as much appreciation as I thought I did," or maybe I don't. And so you just start trying to do that more often, and start to realize that it's really easy for me to do.

Kathy (host):
Obviously, you work with a lot of companies. Have you come across with companies that have done this employee retention, really, really well, and what have they done in their business to get there?

Kristie (guest):
Well, I mean, really, I think a lot of the ideas I've talked about are what some of my clients do. I have one client that his company, they go bowling. I think it was once a week, they have a team bowling night. And. And they just they have fun while they're there, and I know that that's part of it. Is the reward from the owner for you guys work really hard, so we're gonna go do something fun. Yeah, I've just seen a lot of people are flexible. Scheduling is an easy one. Obviously, there's times a year where you've got to nose down and work real hard, but if we've knocked some projects out and we've got two weeks so the next one picks up, you guys use this time to get caught up on other stuff. But if you want to take a half day off on Friday, or, you know, big thing, of course, for parents with children that are working. So of course, these kids school activities, the little school play, or, you know, your beta club, you know Honor Society, little induction ceremonies, they happen in the middle of the day. And so your parent employees really appreciate being able to have that flexible schedule to hey, I'm going to leave the office for a couple of hours, but I'm going to work a little later. I'm going to finish up work from home. It's again, such a little thing you can do, but the employees feel appreciated. They feel trusted enough that, oh, he knows I'm going to get my job done, and he trusts me to do this. So it's a different kind of appreciation, but it's still an appreciation. Yep, I've seen that work for a lot of my clients.

Kathy (host):
Kristie, this has been a great conversation, and you know, I always ask this at the end, if someone were to try to implement that in your business, more appreciation towards their employees and really fostering that culture of appreciation and gratitude in the business, what is the one step that they can do in the next week or two to get them closer to it?

Kristie (guest):
Well, I mean two steps, because the one is really easy. Just start being more intentional with thanking look for opportunities, for things that your employees deserve to be thanked for or told in front of everybody they've done a good job. But it's also start having those conversations with your team, find out what drives them, find out what their goals are, and that's something you can start doing today. And depending on how long your or how big your team is, we'll decide how long it takes you to have all those conversations. You've got a bigger team. Get your management team involved. Start with your management team, what drives them? What are their goals? And then tell them "All right, now we want to do this with the rest of the team. We want to find out what drives everybody," and then you can come back and have meetings and start coming up with game plans of, "Ooh, I didn't know that they liked this. What if we did this as an appreciation for Bill" or, you know, "Susie really wants to do this. Did y'all know she had this, you know, aspiration? Let's see what we can do to help Susie hit that goal."

Kathy (host):
Perfect. So conversations. That's very important, having conversations with your employees versus just kind of letting them be and see what happens. That's… Kristie, thank you so much for being in the show. Please tell us. Where can people find you?

Kristie (guest):
They can find me online at theHRdepartmentKY.com, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook. I've got a link out there. You can schedule a free 30-minute call with me. They can go to my website. I've got some resources, some templates they can download, use however they need. There's some blogs over there as well, including one that discusses some unique employee benefits that you can offer.

Kathy (host):
That's awesome. So we're going to put all of these in the episode show notes. So if you're interested, please go take a look at Kristie is absolutely amazing with these sets of ideas. So thank you so much, Kristie.

Kristie (guest):
It's been great. Thank you so much.